School Of Second Chances Part 1 Minerva COMPLETE
by featherxquill
Summary: Based upon the pasts of the Hogwart's Professors. Came about when I noticed the extreme loyalty that they show to their headmaster, and made me wonder what he had done to inspire that kind of loyalty. Explores the idea that they are all on their 2nd chanc
1. 1 Lost And Found

1 - Lost And Found  
  
Rain pounded heavily on the cobbled street, torrents gushing in gutters and waterfalls cascading from the rooves of houses. Minerva ran, the rain lashing at her face and plastering her thick, brown curls to her skin. She could hear the dogs barking, not far off; hear the shouts of the men. Panic blinded her and she pushed herself harder, the tears on her cheeks washed away by the relentless downpour. Was it just the fear curdling in her gut that was causing her insides to writhe with pain? She prayed it was. As she ran, she glanced desperately and longingly at the gaps beneath fences, but she dared not, not in her present, delicate condition.  
  
A savage, determined howl sounded, very close, and Minerva's panic reached a crescendo. She turned her head to look over her shoulder as she ran, feet blindly pounding the pavement. Her toe caught and she fell sprawling onto the cobbled street, landing heavily on both knees. Pain lanced up through her bones, but it was nothing, a mere pinprick next to the horrible twisting in her gut, as though she was being torn apart from the inside. She doubled up, wrapped her arms about herself and rocked on her injured knees. She could go no further. Red spots clouded her vision, or was it just the blood gushing from between her legs, staining her flimsy gown a deep shade of burgundy? The torrent of rain rushing along the street carried a stream of her blood back down the street towards her pursuers, a beseeching tentacle of her scent for the dogs to fasten on. She couldn't go on. With the strength one could only muster in the most dire of circumstances, she dragged her prostrate self over to the nearest doorstep and fell upon it, and then, watching as the life ebbed slowly down the street - the life, it's life, her life, all life, she played the final, desperate card.  
  
The dog howled again, and its master's heavy boots sloshed through the wet street to where it stood. He stopped for a moment, leant on his knees, hung his head, took a deep breath. "Where is she?" he growled at his dog, and it let out a yip and set off again. He followed; this time at a slow jog, for the dog's pace had lost its sense of urgency. Dogs had a sixth sense about these things - it smelt her weakness. It trotted, nose to the ground, sniffing. Suddenly, its huge head looked up and it barked once, loudly, and dashed off. He dragged himself up the alleyway it had lead him into, rounded the corner into the street, and stopped. The dog had frozen, eyes fixed on the doorstep of a small, shabby house. It's paw was raised, curled under in it's uncertainty, and it's whipcord tail that had been thrashing wildly in the excitement of the chase had faltered and was slowly drooping, a flag that had lost the wind that kept it sailing. It was like watching a triumphant smile fade to a look of confusion on a person's face. Slowly, scenting the air in front of it, it laid down the paw it held aloft, and approached the step.  
  
A silver and black tabby cat lay sprawled on the hard concrete, eyes closed and mouth hanging open, tongue lolling onto the ground. There was blood trickling from somewhere near its tail. The dog growled.  
  
"Back, boy!" The man growled, grabbing the dog by the collar. "Leave it!" He had no idea how the dog had managed to confuse the scent of the cat with the scent of the girl, but he wasn't about to let his dog vent it's frustration upon the poor, defenceless creature before him. For all his other faults, he professed quite a weakness for animals, and he didn't want to see the poor thing hurt anymore than it already was.  
  
"Come on, boy." He murmured resignedly. "We lost her." Fighting the furious anger as well as the deep fear that tried to overtake him, he gave the dog's collar a tug and turned around, turning his own collar up and pulling his coat around him for warmth as the rain pounded down on him, and he splashed away into the darkness of the night.  
  
Minerva was distantly aware of bright light, of the front door of the house she had collapsed upon being opened, and of warm, gentle hands lifting her and carrying her inside. She was so cold, so sleepy, the world around her seemed to expand and contract with her consciousness. The warm crackling of a fire reached her ears, and then blessed, blessed warmth as she was laid down beside it. She had not the strength to lift her head, and so could see naught of the person who had rescued her bar long, masculine fingers. The pain had dulled now.  
  
The man laid the cat down by the fire, gazed down upon the silvery sheen of its wet fur. He ran a gentle hand over its back, scratched it behind the ears. It opened it's tired, green eyes and gazed at him lethargically. He could see that it was bleeding, but he knew he could do naught about that. There were some things that even magic could not repair.  
  
He leant close to the cat, his long nose almost touching her, and he noticed a curious pattern around her eyes, like a pair of square glasses.  
  
"Curious," he murmured in his soft, quiet tones. He recognised that this was no ordinary cat. He reached across to the mantle over the fireplace, wrapped his fingers around a long, thin, piece of wood, and twirled it between them as he considered.  
  
He tapped the wand against his palm, and smiled. She was never going to show herself otherwise. He pointed the wand at the cat, tapped her side gently and muttered some words. The room glowed with a faint blue light that grew steadily brighter until he had to look away. When next he looked to where the cat lay, it was no longer a cat, but a woman of about twenty years.  
  
It was the strangest sensation Minerva had ever felt, being forced to transform, feeling her limbs elongate and change against her furious will that tried to force them back into their cat form. She felt like an elastic band being stretched; her reflexes the rubbery resistance. Then she found herself back in her own skin, huddled in a small ball. She let out a noise somewhere between a whimper and a wail and drew back, only to realise that the fire was directly behind her, and there was nowhere to hide. Drawing herself painfully to her bruised knees, she wrapped her arms about herself and hunched over, conscious of the fact that the thin, white night dress that she wore had gone rather transparent in the rain. She felt very exposed, and didn't know what he wanted of her, but Minerva had never been short of courage, and so she raised her head and looked at her captor and rescuer.  
  
She placed his age as somewhere in his thirties, probably about halfway, though it was hard to tell because of the enormous amount of auburn hair that hung, long, down his back and obscured his face in a long but fine beard. He had a kind face, and watery, pale blue eyes that held a twinkle of humour in them. He held her gaze with a benign sort of confidence, and his eyes did not once travel lower than her face.  
  
"Who are you?" she whispered. "What do you want of me?"  
  
"I wanted to see you, that is all." His voice was gentle and kind as well, and he spoke simply and honestly. But many people who had seemed honest had proved to her before that they were exactly the opposite. She eyed him warily.  
  
"How did you know?" Her curiosity got the better of her, like it always had done. Perhaps that was why she had such an affinity with the form of a cat.  
  
"Those marks around your eyes," his mouth showed the ghost of a smile. "I suspect that you will, one day, need glasses." When she didn't smile or even acknowledge that he had said anything interesting, the smile faded. She was, like a cat, very wary of strangers.  
  
The fire at her back was making her uncomfortably warm; she could feel her hair drying out and springing back up into the large ringlet type curls that it usually formed. She shifted forward ever so slightly on her knees, away from the fire, but still didn't take her eyes from his.  
  
He wanted to offer her a dry robe, and the chance to sit down, but he didn't want to make any sudden movements. So he stayed on his knees before her, and held the gaze of her eyes. "I didn't bring you in off the doorstep because I wanted to hurt you, I assure you."  
  
"Who are you?" she asked, "That you bring in strays off the street?" For the first time he heard in her voice the lilt of an accent that he placed as from somewhere in Scotland.  
  
"My name is Albus Dumbledore," he said softly, "And what kind of person would I be if I found a bleeding cat on my doorstep and left it for dead?" At those words she looked down upon herself and tears filled her eyes. He wished he had been more tactful.  
  
"The kind of person I was running from, I suppose." She murmured quietly, fingers tracing the bloody outline on her gown.  
  
"Who were you running from?" he asked gently, reaching out to lift her chin and her eyes back to hers. She flinched slightly at his touch, but her grief had numbed her, and the fear with which she had regarded him seemed to be gone.  
  
"Muggles." She said it as though she believed that it could be nobody else, as if she didn't think any wizard would have been capable of the ill that she had been done.  
  
"What did they do to you?" he asked, as if his words were an incantation that would induce her to tell her deepest secrets. And perhaps they were, for there was such magic in his quiet, confident, kind voice.  
  
"They snapped my wand."  
  
The pain in her voice rang in his ears, but she didn't elaborate, obviously believing that said it all.  
  
"Muggles snapped your wand?" Albus Dumbledore didn't often sound surprised, but on this occasion he was thunderstruck.  
  
"Yes." She looked away from him again, as if by looking into her eyes she thought he might see the horrible memories flitting behind them, as if he would reach deep into her soul with his piercing blue gaze and touch at the shame that had coiled itself around her mind.  
  
"What is your story?." he trailed off, realising that he still did not know her name.  
  
"Minerva," she answered his unspoken question, her turn to read his mind, "Minerva McGonagall."  
  
"What is your story, Minerva?"  
  
She bowed her head, looking down upon her blood stained gown, and something inside her prompted her, some part of her wanted to share the burden with someone. She gestured at the burgundy marred garment, for the first time drawing his eyes away from her face. It was, in essence, the beginning and the end of her story.  
  
"A witch, without a wand, is just a woman." 


	2. 2 Minerva's Story

2 - Minerva's Story  
  
She re-lived it as she re-told it, and, even though Dumbledore had given her a spare warm cloak to wrap around her shoulders and she was now seated in one of his squishy soft chairs by the fire, it was still one of the most uncomfortable experiences of her life.  
  
Nothing but the deepest love could have could have persuaded Minerva McGonagall, a passionate, fiery and individualistic but ultimately sensible girl to abandon everything she knew - hopes, dreams, family, school, in the pursuit of a fairytale that could never be.  
  
"Funnily enough, the first major story of my life begins with running away, too." And as she spoke, she remembered.  
  
With a shriek of laughter she fell from her bedroom window into the waiting arms of the most beautiful man she had ever known. Sebastian laughed at the expression of shock on her face; she had been attempting to scale the drainpipe, but had lost her balance halfway. He seemed to have known she would, her coordination when inside her human form had never been one overly wonderful. She didn't understand, having been at the other end, how anybodies could be - humans were big and gangly and unsuited to climbing.  
  
Minerva gazed at him from her position clutched close to his chest, at the wispy black hair hanging about his face that had come loose from the long ponytail down his back, at the square shape of his jaw, quivering with laughter, at his dark eyes glittering as they caught shafts of moonlight.  
  
"Kiss me." She murmured, spinning in her love for him, twirling in stars, the heady night seeming to vibrate around her, as if everything was somehow more alive when you were in love.  
  
He pressed his lips to hers and she felt a wild, animal thrill, as much from the kiss as from the knowledge of the freedom that was on her horizon, and what it meant for her life with him.  
  
"We were going to be married. I come from a very old, very respected, very pure blood family. Sebastian was a muggle. He knew what I was, in some sense, and he loved it. I didn't care that he had no magic, my family's issue of pure blood has never been and issue for me.  
  
I went to MacNaughten's, you know, the Scottish Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But I had my OWL's, I was seventeen. An 'O' in transfiguration, 'E's in everything else. I would have done well in my NEWT's, but love blinded me to all that. All I knew was that I wanted to be with Sebastian forever, and if the only way to do that was to abandon everything I had ever known, I would.  
  
I'm nineteen now. I never knew two years could change a person so much."  
  
The wind whipped her hair against her face as they sped along the highway, Minerva's legs tightly locked around Sebastian's waist, arms around his middle, a huge, beast like motorbike carrying them away through the night.  
  
Freedom elated Minerva, her heart and soul soared with happiness high above her body as they rode, and thoughts of her new life filled her with excitement. An amazing adventure. That was what it would be. She would live like a gypsy in the arms of her lover, moving from town to town whenever the wind took her.  
  
They drove for hours that night, and eventually the excitement faded to exhaustion and Minerva's eyes drifted closed, head resting against Sebastian's back. She was, he thought, still rather like a child, the girlish laughter that bubbled from her being and the romantic ideas she had. He loved it about her, loved her for her innocence and naivety as much as for her fiery, individual spirit. He knew she was a witch. She had told him when the subject of running away had first come up, as if it were some test to see if he really cared. He didn't mind at all. Actually, he thought it was rather cool.  
  
When Minerva woke, it was in Sebastian's arms once again. He had lifted her off the bike and was laying her down on a bed in what appeared to be a rather dingy little room.  
  
She blinked repeatedly, trying to shake from the lethargy that gripped her. "Wha.? Where are we?" she mumbled, staring up at him from under her heavy eyelids.  
  
"Shhh." He whispered, running his fingers through her long, mousey curls and pushing them off her brow. "We're in London."  
  
She was suddenly awake. "London?!" she exclaimed.  
  
Sebastian chuckled. "London." He repeated.  
  
"From Glasgow to London in one night? Seb, you must be exhausted." She reached up to touch his cheek; he was lying on his side on the bed beside her.  
  
"Oh, I am, Minny." For the first time she seemed to notice that his eyelids looked heavy as well, and there were the beginnings of dark circles forming beneath them. But despite this, he smiled, folding his arms around her. She burrowed into his warm chest and listened to the beating of his heart. "But it doesn't matter. We're free, and we're here, and we're together. Tomorrow, once I've had some sleep, I'll show you London."  
  
"I can't wait," she murmured, "I've never been to London before." She turned her head up to kiss him. "I love you, Seb."  
  
"You too, Minny." His fingers traced her hairline, twisting one of her curls around his thumb, and silence descended upon them, broken only when, minutes later, Sebastian began to snore. Minerva snuggled even further against him and closed her eyes once again.  
  
Tears glistened on Minerva's eyelashes, but they were quickly evaporated by the heat from the fire roaring in the hearth. Dumbledore had not interrupted her once, just sat there drinking in what she had said, and weighing her but not judging her with those amazing blue eyes.  
  
"I received an owl from my parents the very next day, in reply to the message I had left them on my pillow. I was no longer their daughter, they said, and something about muggle scum. I didn't care. I was in love. If only things could have stayed the way they had begun that first night."  
  
An audible intake of breath from Dumbledore signalled his first interruption in her speech. "But that, I think, is a story for tomorrow. You look quite exhausted. Perhaps I should run you a bath, you might like to. clean up." That was all he said, but she knew he must be thinking of the bloodstained nightgown and what must certainly be hidden beneath it, inhibiting her comfort. "That sound good?" he asked gently.  
  
Minerva nodded.  
  
"Well, I'll be back in a moment, then." He handed her his wand. "You might like to conjure yourself up some new robes. I could do it for you but I think you'd find my taste in clothes is quite appalling." A smile formed beneath his auburn beard, and he turned on his heal and disappeared up the hall behind him.  
  
More tears stung behind Minerva's eyes as she watched his back. This time they were not tears of sadness, though, but disbelief. How could she have stumbled upon this man, and what made him so kind? Something about those twinkling blue eyes and soft voice inspired trust and loyalty, and something in his manner spoke of immense wisdom and knowledge. For the first time that night, Minerva McGonagall was touched by the magic that was Albus Dumbledore. 


	3. 3 His Crooked Nose

3 - His Crooked Nose  
  
Albus Dumbledore woke, early morning light lancing in from his curtains to shine right into his eyes. He thought about rolling over, but then he remembered his young guest, and thought he would be better to rise and fix her breakfast before she woke and didn't know what to do with herself. He slid out of bed and his feet hit the carpeted floor. He picked up his wand from the bedside table and, with a swish, brought his long fluffy purple dressing gown flinging up off the floor into his arms. He pulled it about himself and climbed to his feet, yawning and stretching so that his eyes watered and his muscles gave groans of displeasure.  
  
He padded out into the kitchen and looked around. He opened the magically enhanced fridge that kept everything at the temperature that he most desired it, and waved his wand so that half a dozen eggs and as many rashers of bacon flew out. He left them hovering in the air for a moment, jerked his hand toward the cupboard, then the stove, and various pots and pans began to sort themselves out, while the stove lit. With another wave, the bacon dropped itself into the nearest frypan, the eggs wafted over and cracked perfectly into six egg rings, and the room began to fill with the sounds and smells of frying. As an afterthought, the toaster flicked on at the wall, and Dumbledore beckoned forth a few slices of bread.  
  
Minutes later, having supervised the cooking of breakfast over the rim of a strong cup of tea, he arranged a plate with a medley of eggs, bacon and toast, poured a glass of icy pumpkin juice, laid both on a tray, and wandered out into the lounge room.  
  
Minerva lay curled, knees pulled in close and head resting on her hands, on the elongated lounge he had converted into quite a comfortable bed. A white duvet covered her to her chest, and her face was partially obscured by the thick, messy curls that radiated over the pillow.  
  
He watched her for a moment. In sleep, she looked so, so young, and at that moment he could see the child she had been only a few years before, the niave girl she had described the previous night from behind eyes that had seen so much in the last twenty-four months. Sleep made even the most worldly appear innocent, and only in sleep could a lot of people be seen for what they truly harboured inside.  
  
He slid the breakfast tray onto the table beside him, laid his wand beside it. Taking a step closer, he leant down near her, and reached across to run fingers over her brow.  
  
"Minerva?"  
  
Minerva jerked into consciousness, her light sleep punctured by someone touching her - she had learnt to sleep lightly. Somebody was touching her! For a moment she forgot where she was, let out a screech and swiped blindly at her attacker, sitting bolt upright. She felt her hand connect with something, and felt it give beneath her blow, and only then did her heart rate slow, and did she realise where she was and what she had done.  
  
Albus Dumbledore had not cried out as her fist connected with his face, in truth it had shocked him too much, but as she stared at him, horror struck by what she had done, she realised that he was in considerable pain. His hands were clutched over his face, over his nose, and, as she watched, blood seeped out between his tightly laced fingers.  
  
"Oh, my Gosh!" she exclaimed, "Oh I am so sorry! What? What did I do?!"  
  
Albus Dumbledore was shaking, but it wasn't with anger or indignation, but with pain. He took his hands away from his face, and she saw what she had done. His nose was bent at an obscene angle, and it was from it that the blood was gushing. His eyes were watering, but through his pain he managed to utter the word "wand" from between gritted teeth.  
  
Instantly understanding, she looked around, saw the wand where it lat beside the breakfast table and lunged for it, grabbed it and handed it to him. He took it with a bloody hand, and turned it upon himself. Eyes drawing towards his own nose, he muttered the word "Emmendo!". As if someone had turned off a tap, the bleeding stopped and the bones healed; the pained expression left Dumbledore's face.  
  
But he had not done an overly good job of the spell. His nose, though healed, was not at the same angle as it had been. It remained as long as ever but was slightly crooked.  
  
"Ah, well," he surveyed himself in a mirror he had conjured out of nowhere, "I never was a particularly good healer." He seemed unconcerned. "I'm sure it will be able to be rectified."  
  
Minerva, however, was still appalled by what she had done. "I. I don't know what came over me. I'm so sorry. I."  
  
"That's quite all right." He waved away her apologies. "I admit that I have never known what it is like to live in constant fear for your safety, and I should not have presumed to wake you in such a manner without consequences."  
  
"But I, I."  
  
"Think no more of it." He ended, changed the subject by handing her the breakfast tray, and locomoting his from the kitchen so it spun out to join him. "I will have it fixed before the day is out."  
  
But, as time would tell, Dumbledore may have been a bad healer, but the job he did he did well, and even with further attempts from him, gazing in a mirror, and endeavours from much more celebrated healers, his nose remained stubbornly crooked, as he had set it that morning. The crooked nose, then, could safely be said to be the first big impact that Minerva McGonagall made on Albus Dumbledore. 


	4. 4 Keeper Of The Key

4 - Keeper Of The Key  
  
"Sebastian certainly did show me the sights of London the next day, his London. The poor but ultimately happy East End, the pubs and bars and the people that he knew. London was like nowhere I had ever been before, it was big, and its underbelly even bigger, and I did not at first understand all the layers of the ancient city. I probably still don't, but I think I am not arrogant in saying I understand the layers of life more completely than I did then, even if it was only two years ago. I know what it is like to love, to live, to fear, and to lose." She trailed off. Minerva was sitting once again in the squishy armchair by Dumbledore's fire; she seemed to have claimed it as her own. Tears stung behind her eyes again at her words and the thoughts they dredged up, but she fought them back. The blood had abated the previous night, and the pain was gone, but now she felt empty, in more than one sense. The flower she had been nurturing for the past four months had wilted, and the knowledge that she would never see it grow or blossom left her with a strong sense of grief at what she would never know.  
  
Albus watched her, and she was sure in some way he could read her mind, because he did not need to ask what she was thinking. He simply nodded, the expression of deepest sympathy on his face.  
  
She shifted in her seat. Somehow, she felt even more exposed now than she had the previous night, when she had been so absorbed in her grief and thoughts that she had not even really been aware of her surroundings. Now, even though she was wrapped in a luxurious fluffy red dressing gown and warm tartan pyjamas of her own creation, his penetrating eyes made her feel more naked than she had ever felt before. She sipped her pumpkin juice and nibbled at a piece of bacon before speaking again.  
  
With one hand wrapped around hers, Sebastian lead Minerva through the open door of a dusty pub. That was the only way to describe it - dusty. A heavy layer of grey grit smeared everything in sight, but the bars inhabitants were smiling and laughing, huge mugs of larger clutched in plump hands. She looked around. Sebastian was waving at a group of rough looking individuals, mostly men but a few women slightly older than her that looked nothing like how she perceived herself.  
  
"Minny, there are some people I want you to meet." He smiled at her, weaving through the crowd, fingers gripping hers as she trailed him between a fat man drinking and a hooker with breasts pushed up who was trying to deaden her senses with what looked like a very hearty helping of whisky.  
  
"Hi." Sebastian was shaking hands and smiling, taking the offer of a cigarette and inclining his head to accept the light. Taking it from between his lips for a moment, he tugged Minerva's hand so she was brought up by his side.  
  
"Everyone, this is Minny. Minerva." He corrected himself at a glance from her, Minny was his private name for her, nobody else called her that and she didn't really want them to start. He gestured around the table. "Minny - Matthew," a tall man with a button nose and small hazel eyes, mousy hair and a vacant expression; "Thom," a broad shouldered fellow with a black beard and a huge smile; "Vivica," a reedy blonde woman with fine hair and pointed features, "Orton," a very good looking man, tall, dark and handsome like Sebastian himself, dressed in leathers and with a cheeky smile; "Cynthia," a pale dark haired woman with hawklike features who surveyed Minerva with beady, judgmental eyes; "And Mike," a short timid sort of bloke who smiled sheepishly and buried his face in his mug of beer.  
  
Minerva smiled in an unsure sort of way and said an awkward "Hi". She hated introductions. She felt as out of place as she would have if they had known she was a witch, standing there with them all eyeing her as one eyes a rather odd looking product in a supermarket - they, like she, had noticed that she was nothing like them. She was well dressed - elegant, even, in a casual sort of way. Her hair, even though she had only brushed it through once, sat in gorgeously dishevelled curls. She was effortlessly beautiful. She wore a modest but figure hugging black jumper and a long emerald green skirt that brought out the brilliant colour of her eyes.  
  
Sebastian was speaking to her. "What would you like to drink?" he asked her as they all resumed their conversations.  
  
"Gillywat." she trailed off at his vacant expression. "Sorry. I don't know, what do muggles drink?"  
  
He eyed her with a small amount of frustration. "I would appreciate if you didn't call me that." To him it sounded insulting, but to her such a term was as normal as mentioning a persons nationality.  
  
"I'm sorry," she apologised again, "Surprise me or something, I've never been to. they serve very different drinks in the pubs that I have ever been to."  
  
Sebastian nodded. He didn't seem to realise how hard this was for her, how different it all was. Obviously, when she had told him she was a witch, and shown him what she could do, he had not really realised how much of a lifestyle it was, and how very different from his muggle existence. He had looked at her funnily that morning when she had asked him how to use a microwave, and, when she explained to him that they didn't have electricity in the wizarding world, he had looked at her as though she were backward. 'Magic interferes' she had explained, to which he had shaken his head as though to dislodge some unpleasant thoughts.  
  
He pushed through the crowd again to the bar, and Minerva slid into the nearest vacant chair.  
  
"So what do you do?" she was immediately accosted by Cynthia. It was just a question, but the way the woman looked at her, surveying her from underneath severely plucked eyebrows and smiling with a false, sugar sweet grimace made Minerva feel like she was being interrogated.  
  
"Oh. well, nothing, really, I left school to come here with Seb." She looked Cynthia in the eye, watching for her reaction. She need not have looked so closely. Cynthia's mouth spread into a wide, condescending smile.  
  
"You did, did you?"  
  
Minerva nodded. Cynthia turned away for a moment to pluck at the sleeve of the other woman's top, and Vivica turned on her as well. She suddenly realised what a bug caught in a jar must feel like. A sudden urge to transform into a cat and flee grabbed her, but she fought against it and gripped the table instead.  
  
"Going to be married, are you?" she asked sarcastically, and Vivica laughed.  
  
"Well, that was the plan." Minerva felt wounded, but at the same time, slightly suspicious. How had she guessed that? Sebastian hadn't done this kind of thing before, had he? The two exchanged meaningful glances, but said nothing.  
  
"So," Minerva asked, "How do you two know Seb?"  
  
"Oh, here and there. We meet through friends, business, all kinds of things. I can't actually remember how I met him, but yeah. been in this circle for a while now." Minerva nodded. Silence descended upon them for a time, before Minerva was rescued by Sebastian, sweeping back to the table with a mug of beer and a tall, brightly coloured drink with a piece of pineapple on the side of the glass.  
  
"There you go, my love." He said with a smile and a flourish of the hand, "Hope you like it." He winked at her, a private message between the two of them.  
  
Minerva's eyes glittered as she took it from him, the stars of her love glistening in the green orbs. She smiled and her eyes followed him as he wove back through the crowd, watching him smile, chat, roar with laughter. She sipped her drink and found it pleasantly sweet with a rich, alcoholic undertone, and suddenly she decided that she care one whit for Cynthia and Vivica's condescending, meaningful looks, they simply didn't understand that she and Seb were the only ones for each other.  
  
The evening passed in a haze of conversation, laughter and more of those pineapple things, and it wasn't until much later in the night that Minerva was dragged, unceremoniously and with a shudder, back into the world she had so easily left behind.  
  
She pushed her way through the crowd toward the ladies room, brushing up against people as she went, when suddenly she felt a strong hand grab tight on her wrist. Gasping and jumping in fright, she looked down and made to tug her wrist away.  
  
He was large, gnarled and mean looking, with mangy white hair and a hooked nose. His eyes were uncannily pale, irises a very pale blue almost as white as the rest. He smiled as she looked down, thin lips twisting into a grin that exposed very yellow teeth. "Hello, witch." He hissed, somehow loud enough for her to hear but not for anybody else. She looked down upon him in horror - how could he know?  
  
"You stand out like a phoenix in a forest!" he cackled with laughter, a mean spirited, dry sound. "Don't think I don't know what you are!" She wrenched her hand from his grip and tried to push past him. This time he didn't reach out to touch her, but his words stopped her more effectively than anything else he could have done.  
  
"You're the Keeper of the Key."  
  
She turned her face to look at him, eyes wide with shock, backed away a step, hand inadvertently rising to her clutch at her throat.  
  
"Yes," he nodded, "And don't you dare think that running away into the muggle world will mean people will want it any less."  
  
Albus Dumbledore raised an eyebrow lazily, eyes surveying her with interest. "The Keeper of the Key?" he asked quietly.  
  
"Yes." Minerva's voice shook, and as Albus watched she reached up to her throat and grabbed at something he could not see. She wrenched it from around her neck and he watched as a fine gold chain materialised in her hand, and she pulled it from beneath her robe and tossed it to the table. A golden locket the size of a matchbox fell open, and inside lay a small gold skeleton key, its end encrusted with a string of sapphires.  
  
"Oh." Dumbledore's mouth made a small 'o' and his eyes lit with understanding. "Oh!" Surprise dawned on him, then even deeper understanding. "I appreciate everything now." 


	5. 5 The Seer

5 - The Seer  
  
"The Key Of Hearts." He looked at with an amazed kind of awe and respect, but not with the kind of lust that everybody else had ever eyed it with. His brain reeled with information he had once read about the artefact. He had never known that it actually existed. "It will reveal to the bearer the true heart and intentions of any person, when they decide to use it, but with that knowledge it will betray the person whose heart it has seen. It cannot be destroyed, and cannot be taken from the bearer - he or she must offer it freely for someone else to even touch it."  
  
"Of course," Minerva whispered, "I didn't know the catch when I was given it - didn't know it until after I used it. If I had, I would never have done what I did." Tears filled her eyes.  
  
"I was six years old when I was made Keeper." And she was there again.  
  
A little girl with mousy curls stepped through a beaded curtain into a room heavily perfumed with heady, spicy incense, gazing around, eyes wide with apprehension. The room was decorated with glittering orbs and crystals, and the chairs were hung with gauzy, shimmery, tasselled fabric. Minerva was afraid - what if she was judged badly? What if there was something wrong with her?  
  
"Come here, child, come here." a voice wafted from one of the cushiony armchairs, and what had previously appeared to be a collection of shawls and mismatched cushions disengaged itself and shuffled toward Minerva.  
  
"My great aunt was a celebrated seer, as was her mother before her, and her mother before her. My grandmother, as well as my mother, were denied - or spared, depending how you look at it, that gift, as was I. It was customary for every female member of our family to visit at the age of six to have our destiny read. I was dreading it."  
  
Her great aunt, Constance, would have been about sixty, but she looked considerably older. She was thin and gaunt, with sunken cheeks and small, beady grey eyes. Her skin was pale and her hair frizzy and white.  
  
"Come, Minerva," Constance reached out to take her hands; thin, ring laden fingers wrapping around her own, and Minerva was lead across to the table, upon which sat a large, purple tinged crystal ball. "Sit down, girl." she gestured across the table from her, "And let me have a look at your palm."  
  
Minerva did as she was told, fretting that there might be something terribly wrong with her. Her palm was smooth and sweat damp from her nervousness, but if her aunt noticed this, she showed no sign of it, running her long fingernails over the creases of the skin and murmuring incoherently to herself. After an excruciatingly long amount of time, her aunt laid her hand down on the table, but instead of telling her what she saw, she ran her hands across the surface of the orb. Minerva watched in awe as the ball filled with a thick, heavy looking mist. She could make no form out of it, but her aunt obviously saw something, for Constance gasped and clutched both hands to her chest theatrically.  
  
"It can't be!" she exclaimed. "It can't be.you." She eyed Minerva as though she had somehow performed some imperceptible spell to alter the outcome of the reading, then sighed, seeming to realise that what she suspected was impossible. "And I had such high hopes for Sybil."  
  
Of course, Minerva thought. Sybil. Sybil was Aunt Constance's favourite. She was related to Minerva, somehow, like Constance's cousin's daughter or something; Minerva hardly saw her, though when she did see her she despised her.  
  
"But no, no it appears that it must be you." She tried to say it sweetly, but it appeared to be rather bittersweet, leaving a bad taste in her mouth.  
  
"What must be me?" Minerva asked, suddenly afraid of what her aunt was talking about.  
  
But her aunt didn't answer immediately. From around her neck she seemed to be unfastening something, and as she took if off it materialised in her hands. It was a fine gold chain with a large locket on it, the size of a matchbox. She lay it on the table and the chain fell to form a golden snake around it.  
  
"This," she opened the locket to show Minerva what was inside, "Is called the Key of Hearts. It is a precious magical gift. Fate has marked you as the next keeper of the key. When you most need it, you can use the key, and it will look into the heart of any person and tell you their true intentions." She closed the locket again, reached up with the chain and looped it around Minerva's neck. Instantly it disappeared into her skin so that nobody could see it. "You must never tell anybody that you have it, because people will want it. Use it when you must, but only when you must, for be aware that it will have consequences - nothing happens without consequences. Guard it well. Nobody can take it from you unless you give it to them."  
  
It was a tremendous weight to lay upon a six year old.  
  
"Consequences." Minerva said bitterly, spitting the word into the air. "Consequences was all she said. She never told me that the key was corrupt, that it would betray me, because it betrayed me as much as it did anyone else."  
  
She broke off, the words choked in her throat. She couldn't say the rest of what she had been going to say. "But I will tell you, Albus, I will never, NEVER, for the rest of my existence, trust anyone who calls themselves seer." 


	6. 6 Planting The Seed

6 - Planting The Seed  
  
"But how did it happen?" Albus Dumbledore asked quietly. "How did everything go so wrong?"  
  
Minerva looked at him, chest tight. "Well, it was all wonderful for over a year, we were very happy. But all that changed a few months ago." Her throat went dry, she couldn't speak.  
  
"I. I'll tell you another time." She picked up the locket, heaved herself from her chair and fled. Albus heard the back door swing open and closed. Minerva had decided to lose herself in the garden.  
  
Minerva opened the back door into a wilderness of flowers, trees, lawns and shrubs. She looked around in amazement at the yard's beauty and vastness, made all the more mind blowing by the fact that, from the outside, the muggle point of few, it appeared no larger than ten square feet.  
  
A sprinkling fountain pattered just a few feet in front of her, a little bird that was a vibrant shade of blue washing itself in the warm waters. A sultry, summer sun bathed everything in its bright glow.  
  
Minerva padded across the soft grass and settled herself at the foot of a large jacaranda tree, the grass around her carpeted in a velvety layer of mauve flowers. She pulled her legs underneath each other and lay her hands in her lap, clutching the locket inside them. She turned it over in her hands; it looked so simple, so beautiful, so innocent. But then even the most beautiful looking things could be deceptive. She laced the chain through her fingers. and the memory was upon her, unbidden.  
  
She sat on the bed in the dimly lit room above the London bar, running her fingers over the casing of the key and wondering how it was that that man had been able to see it. It had been over a year since, but she had seen him again that night, and he had fixed her with a piercing, knowing stare. She was afraid of him.  
  
It had been an interesting night. Things had been slightly dull for the last few weeks. Truth be known, Minerva was missing the magic world ever so much, and was sick of having to use muggle methods of doing things all the time. She was even thinking about asking the weird guy for directions to Diagon alley (because he was quite obviously some kind of wizard) just so she could spend a day among her people.  
  
But that night had been different. She had thought that she'd met all of Sebastian's friends over the months they had been together, but that night she had been proven wrong.  
  
"Minny!" Seb had exclaimed with a wave of a half empty mug of beer, beckoning her over to where he sat by the bar. "This is Jeromie; he's a really good friend of mine." Minerva approached and Jeromie stood up to meet her. She looked up at him with wide eyes - he was the tallest man she had ever met. He had short, very dark brown hair and vibrant blue eyes, and bold features permanently set in a boyish expression of amusement. He smiled down at her and held out his hand to shake hers.  
  
"You're very tall." Was all she seemed to be able to think to say. She smiled sheepishly.  
  
"Yeah, I'd noticed." There was a glint of amusement in his eyes, and his smile only widened. Minerva laughed, and Jeromie took his seat back at the bar again, bringing himself down to her height. She slid onto the stool beside him.  
  
Jeromie was the most engaging person that Minerva had ever met - he was funny, charming, childlike in his humour but mature in his thinking. He was easy to talk to, and Minerva found that talking to a man when there was no expectation upon her that she would be anything but friendly was so releasing that she could let her guard down. Twice she almost told him she was a witch, but kept herself in check by reminding herself that she had only just met this man, and while he made her think she could trust him, there might be others overhearing in the bar that she could not. Sebastian found their continual banter amusing, and he left them at it, preferring to go and find people to talk to who actually noticed he was there.  
  
Minerva sat on the bed, turning the key's casing over in her hands. Yes, it had been a rather interesting evening.  
  
As she looped the chain back around her neck, she hear the door to the room open, and looked up into Sebastian's beautiful, dark, smiling eyes.  
  
"I'm glad to see you liked Jeromie." He smiled as he looked at her.  
  
She smiled back. "Yes, he's fantastic."  
  
Sebastian came to sit on the bed beside her and she slithered comfortably into his arms. "Not as fantastic as me, I hope?" he asked with a grin, completely confident in his own sense of self-worth.  
  
"Of course not, Seb." She replied with a smile, leaning up to plant a soft kiss tenderly on his lips.  
  
"That's good." He replied as their faces parted, "Because I wouldn't want to have to kill him." That cheeky grin again. "Anyway." he disengaged himself from her and began to unbutton his shirt, "It's very late."  
  
Although they slept in the same bed, it had been over a year and Sebastian and Minerva had never become a real couple, so to speak, she had never felt ready, but that night she was scorched with a wild, animal impulse more powerful than anything she had ever felt before.  
  
"Sebastian?"  
  
When she said his name, this time it was in a totally different tone to that which she had ever used before, and when he turned to look at her, he saw her skin glowing, her chest heaving, her curls seeming to radiate out from her head. Her eyes were passionately intense, and she reached out to him and drew him to her, around her, into her.  
  
.Minerva fell back onto the pillows, chest heaving, beads of sweat glistening on her warm skin. Sebastian collapsed beside her, breathing heavily. She turned her head to look into his eyes, smiling, fulfilled, glowing. He smiled back, and his fingers reached up to trace the line made by the bone at her throat.  
  
"Minny," he whispered, for he could feel nothing there, where only minutes before there had been a very real adornment, "What is that gold chain that you wear?"  
  
Minerva started. "What?" her eyes widened in shock and she sat up. "What do you mean?"  
  
Sebastian sat up to look at her, to weigh her gaze in his own. "The gold chain with the locket at the end that I could feel a few minutes ago, but is invisible now."  
  
"You.you could see it?" Minerva's voice wavered with her uncertainty.  
  
"Yes, just a minute ago. it was getting in the way." He smiled. "What is it?"  
  
"I. I don't understand how that is possible," she whispered, reaching up to touch it at her throat. He saw her reach up to her throat and twist the air between her fingers. The gold chain and locket fell into her lap, materialising into gold.  
  
"That, that's it." He looked at her. "Is it magical?" He felt stupid saying it, for the idea of magic went against everything he had ever been taught about the world. He knew, though, that Minerva's world was very different to his, and he wanted to learn.  
  
"Yes." She replied. Taking one deep breath and seeming to come to a decision, she picked up the locket and opened it to show what was inside.  
  
"My God," he whispered, looking at the gold, sapphire encrusted key with a mixture of emotions - awe, greed, amazement. "It's so beautiful." He reached out toward her, making to touch it, but where his fingers would have made contact with the tiny item they instead passed straight through and out the other side.  
  
"The Keeper of the Key is the only one who may touch it or hold it," she said quietly, "While I've got it you won't be able to touch it at all. Nobody can take it unless I give it to them."  
  
"Then why. why could I feel it before?"  
  
"I. I suppose when we became one, in essence you became a part of me, and you could see and feel it as I do." She smiled, looking up at him, the memories of his touch still fresh on her tingling skin.  
  
"But here." she continued, handing the locket into his fingers and pulling her hands away. "That is how much I trust you, Sebastian."  
  
He looked at her and felt a tight swelling of his chest, as if those words had just made his heart that little bit bigger. He was a better person for having gained her trust and her love. "What does it do?" he asked, tracing the intricate design of the sapphires on the handle.  
  
"It allows the bearer to see into the heart of anyone she choses, their true feelings, emotions and intentions. I don't know how, or what they see, because I have never used it."  
  
"But why?" he asked, imagining that if such a precious gift were his he would use it every time he was playing poker, or anytime he thought somebody might be lying to him.  
  
"Nothing happens without consequences, Sebastian, and the seer who gave it to me told me to only use it when I really desperately needed to, because there would be repercussions."  
  
"What kind?" he asked.  
  
"I don't know." She shook her head. Sebastian took one last look at the key with a gaze that Minerva could not decipher, and then reached back up around her neck and fastened it there.  
  
He kissed her cheek, her nose, eyelids, her lips, and ran his fingers over her face. "I think we need to sleep, now, my love, or we will never get up in the morning."  
  
But the morning, it transpired, held changes for Minerva. She woke in the empty bed feeling as though she were about to be sick, a wave of nausea running from head to toe. She tumbled from the bed and immediately into the bathroom, where it took her minutes to heave up the nothing she had in her gut anyway. She felt better, afterwards, slightly, but still light headed, and as she pulled a thick dressing gown round her and wandered downstairs into the closed bar, Cynthia greeted her cheerfully by telling her that she looked terrible.  
  
"I don't know what it is," she confided, "I just woke up feeling like a dead dog."  
  
Cynthia smiled that hawklike smile. "I think the key of it might be in your own activities," she speculated, "Perhaps you have been making more than love with Sebastian."  
  
Minerva snapped the case of the key shut. Treacherous thing, she thought. Pushing herself to her feet, she looped the chain back around her neck and fastened it, letting it fall to hang between her breasts as it always did. How she would love to be rid of it. Pulling together the courage and the words she needed, she walked back into the house and silently resumed her seat by the fire. Albus Dumbledore had not moved, and as she sat down he merely raised his eyebrows.  
  
"Did you like the garden?" he asked with a benign smile.  
  
Minerva didn't answer him. She reached up to her throat and fingered the chain. Despite the length of it, she felt that it was choking her. She took a deep breath and told Albus everything. 


	7. 7 Questions Of Loyalty

7 - Questions Of Loyalty  
  
"It took me a few moments to register what she had said, the subtle emphasis on the word key. I remember looking at her strangely and being plagued by a sudden demon of suspicion. Had Sebastian been telling people? How did Cynthia know we had been making love? Then I forced the thoughts out of my mind - obviously Cynthia just assumed that, and the emphasis on the word 'key' had been my imagination. Of course it had."  
  
Her legs were curled underneath her in a very catlike pose, and she surveyed Albus over the rim of a mug of tea, having just told him all about what she had been remembering out in the garden. He had not batted an eyelid at her awkward rendition of the events that night, only smiled slightly, amused by how tongue tied she was.  
  
"I am well experienced in the ways of the world." Had been all he had said.  
  
"Obviously, Cynthia was right, we had made more than love that night, but I wasn't to really discover that until later that month, when things didn't happen as they should. That first morning was the only time I got sick, and with hindsight I don't think it had anything to do with that, probably some off seafood, or something." She paused for a moment, thinking of the evening that she had found herself in Dumbledore's care, and feeling again the sense of sadness and loss at the hollowness now inside her, of the person she would never know.  
  
"But Cynthia wasn't the only person who was to arouse my suspicion."  
  
Thom winked lewdly at Minerva from across the bar. "How are you and Seb going, eh?" He grinned in a way that made her feel ill, and she turned away from him and made her way outside. She sat down in a swinging chair on the front veranda and pushed with her feet so that it rocked slowly. Her eyes were frozen on a spot on the brick wall across the street. She stared, unblinkingly, her insides churning. Had Sebastian not been discreet about what they had done? Had he betrayed her trust by boasting to his friends of his achievement? How could he do that? Why would he do that? And the key: had what Cynthia said been an accident, or had Sebastian let that slip as well? The feeling of not knowing what to think writhed in her insides. She trusted him, she thought she did, but how had they all of a sudden started to make lewd comments, if he hadn't said anything. Was it possible that others had heard them? Surely not, she didn't think they had made that much noise. But it was possible.  
  
Minerva was dragged from her thoughts by the sound of the hotel door opening, and she smiled when she saw that it was Jeromie.  
  
"Oh hello!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Nice evening," he commented on the warm, heavy, damp air around them, and she moved to one side of the chair as he seated himself beside her. He flipped open a packet of cigarettes and slipped one between his lips, then offered her one. Minerva shook her head - she didn't see how anybody could suck on those things, and wondered why muggles had ever thought that breathing in smoke was an interesting pastime. She said none of this, of course, only watched as Jeromie flicked open a silver cased lighter and ignited the end of the little roll. He took a long drag and breathed a haze of white smoke out into the evening air.  
  
"What are you doing out here all by yourself, anyway?" he asked, giving her a curious look.  
  
Minerva took a deep breath. "Just.thinking."  
  
"Oh yeah? Penny for your thoughts?"  
  
Minerva smiled; she'd never heard that phrase before. "I'm just questioning a few things, that's all. Maybe it's just silly female worries, making things out of nothing, I don't know." She sighed. That was the whole thing with uncertainty, you didn't know.  
  
"You're not getting homesick, are you, after all this time?" he seemed surprised.  
  
"No.no it's not that.though I do miss some of the people I used to know." My wizard friends, she added silently. "No, it's. well, it's Sebastian, really."  
  
"Sebastian?" Jeromie raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I thought you two were really happy."  
  
"We are.well, I think we are.. I thought we were. I don't know."  
  
Jeromie waved the hand that held the cigarette. "No elaboration?"  
  
"Well, you may have heard. that's what I'm worried about, that you heard, that everybody's heard. The other night, Sebastian and I, well, we." she blushed. She was still a girl in many respects, and the words seemed to tie in her throat.  
  
"Did what lovers do?" Jeromie offered casually, taking another drag on his cigarette.  
  
"Yeah," Minerva smiled, liking the way he worded it and the he understood completely without her having to say it. He seemed to be able to read her completely. "And. well. I don't know if I'm imagining it or not, but people keep making comments, just before Thom gave me this horrible wink and made some kind of stupid comment. and I just wonder, how do they know? Has Sebastian been telling people, boasting of his conquest? I just don't know what to think." She turned her head to look at him, resting her chin on one fisted hand. "Have you heard anything? Has he said anything to you?"  
  
Jeromie shook his head. "He hasn't said anything to me, and nor has anyone else. I don't know. Maybe he alluded to it - men are like that, you know - it sounds horrible but we are. Maybe a few cleverly placed winks gave people the idea. we kind of like having others know that we're being successful. I don't think it's a reflection on his feelings for you, though, even if he has said something. It doesn't mean he doesn't respect you, really, just maybe he doesn't quite realise how private you are. You should ask him."  
  
Minerva snorted. "That would be a cheery conversation."  
  
"No but you should." Jeromie insisted. "You're doing adult things now; you need to be grown up enough to talk about them. If you can't talk to him your relationship will fall apart."  
  
Minerva nodded. The truth was, though, that it wasn't the idea of Sebastian mentioning what they had done that upset her so much as the thought that he may have been indiscreet about the key. Of course, she didn't want their activities to become the local gossip, but she could handle that, if she had to. She loved him enough to forgive him for that. But the key was something completely different - the key must remain secret no matter what. She thought, in letting him hold it, in showing him how much she trusted him just by sharing it with him, that he would understand that. Perhaps she had been wrong. Maybe she should just ask him.  
  
"Just say something, Minny. It's bound to unlock a few barriers." 


	8. 8 Betrayal

8 - Betrayal  
  
"I don't think I was ready for it," Minerva said resolutely, watching Albus for his reaction, "Not to share my body with him, and especially not to share my secret with him. If I hadn't of, maybe none of what happened would have."  
  
It took another day of lewd comments and subtle mentions of things being the key of an issue or unlocking meaning for Minerva to really become so hurt and worried that she wanted to ask Sebastian of his part in the rumours.  
  
She sat on the bed up in their room, fingering the locket that hung at her neck. She had a terrible churning sick feeling in her stomach at what was happening, but she was too unsure to cry. If she asked him, what would he say? Would he tell her the truth? Would he lie? What if he hadn't said anything? What if he was so hurt that she had even suspected him that their relationship wouldn't recover? She was plagued by a thousand demons but she had no answers for her questions.  
  
She thought about what Jeromie had said. "Just say something, Minny. It's bound to unlock a few barriers." She though about his choice of words, twisting the chain at her neck. unlock a few barriers. What had her aunt said to her, all those years ago? "Use it when you must, but only when you must, for be aware that it will have consequences." She remembered it as though it were yesterday, though she hadn't understood it then, and wasn't sure that she even did all these years after.  
  
Consequences? She wondered questioningly. What kind of consequences? What would happen if she used the key to find out what Sebastian was feeling and thinking while he slept? What kind of consequences? She was sure she could handle them, whatever they were. Only when you must. Did this warrant as such a time? She didn't know, because she didn't know how dire the needs may be. Her aunt had never explained to her specifically what 'when you must' meant. She knew she wasn't to use it every time she suspected someone was lying to her, but she wasn't sure just how specific 'when you must' was supposed to mean. Only when you were in dire peril? Or whenever you felt like you were never going to be able to live your life if you didn't know the truth? The latter were her feelings at that moment. She looked down at the pendant where it hung between her breasts, and made a decision.  
  
Sebastian snored lightly from beside her, his raspy breathing filling the room. Minerva's eyes were wide open. She sat up, twisting around to stare at him. He lay curled on his side with his back to her. She felt scared by what she was about to do, and scared that reading his heart would confirm her suspicions, but she had to know. She slid from the bed and walked lightly around to his side, kneeling on the floor beside him to watch his bare chest slowly rising and falling, his eyes moving slightly behind the closed lids as through he were dreaming. She reached up to push a hair out of his face, kissed him, her lips light as the landing of a butterfly, then stopped.  
  
How would she even use the Key? Her aunt had never told her that either. Perhaps he aunt had hoped she would never need to use it. She pulled it out from beneath her nightgown and opened the locket. The key glinted at her, even in the darkness, as though it generated its own light. Well, she thought, it was the Key Of Hearts. Unhooking the chain from around her neck, she reached across and lay her hand on his chest, and touched the golden key to the spot above his heart.  
  
The room lit up with a golden light, the light of understanding. Sebastian woke, eyes wide, and his gaze locked with Minerva's, an expression of surprise and shock across his face.  
  
And Minerva saw. His thoughts, emotions and feelings poured across the link between them directly into her mind, images flashing before her eyes like secret code made clear.  
  
Him taking her in his arms, enfolding her in his love. he loved her so much, he had never felt so wanted than the moment than she had had decided she wanted him. he wanted to marry this beautiful Scottish girl with the amazing powers he had never even thought possible. She was the most amazing person he had ever known. Watching her fall from the window, catching her in his arms. "kiss me"... driving all night with her curled at his back like a baby squirrel. watching her get to know his friends, laughing and joking with them. abandoning everything she had ever known for him. her immense wisdom about some things but intense naivety relating to others. the night they had made love. it had been like nothing he had ever known before, like nobody he had ever known before, she had got into his heart and his mind. it was the most private, fantastic thing he had ever felt before, nothing like the kind of experiences people told crude tales about in bars. her placing her precious key in his hand. an object of such power. her trust of him that made him feel as though his chest was going to burst with love for her. felt like a better person for knowing her and having her love. surely her love made him something he had never been before.  
  
Sebastian's fingers closed around the chain hanging from her fist, and shocked her out of what she had been seeing. Tears streamed down her cheeks, tears of happiness at what she had seen, but they stopped abruptly at the look of pain etched across his face.  
  
"Minny," he whispered, "You. you didn't trust me?"  
  
The tears were drying in sticky rivers down her face, but she couldn't keep the relieved smile from her lips. "No, Sebastian, Seb it's okay." she sniffed. She had known him more completely in those moments than she had ever known him before. "I love you."  
  
But her happiness turned to horror when a few moments later the light surrounding the key turned red, and the small object began to grow hot in her fingers. She wrenched it away from Sebastian and dropped it to the floor, the chain and locket clattering alongside it. But there was a small, key shaped burn on Sebastian's chest, and the key on the floor began to smoke, and so did the mark on his chest. His face went taut with pain, and he looked at Minerva with eyes that she would remember for the rest of her life: so full of hurt, bewilderment and betrayal. "Minny.why?" the word escaped his lips, but she never had the chance to tell him.  
  
The mark on his chest turned black, and Sebastian died.  
  
Minerva gasped and gagged, the pain in her own heart very much physical, a terrible burning fire of guilt, shattered dreams and grief. She shook him violently, as if expecting him to snap out of it and smile as though it was all a big joke, but he just lay there unblinking, all the expression gone from eyes that now looked like no more than cloudy glass marbles. Minerva screamed in despair, clawing at him in an attempt to bring him closer to her, to bring him back, to say she was sorry. To give her own heart to save his.  
  
"You killed him, Minerva." Came a soft voice from the doorway. "Didn't you know you would?" Minerva looked up, tears obscuring her vision like heavy rain on a windscreen, but Minerva didn't need to be able to see properly to know who the very tall figure before her was. Jeromie.  
  
He strode across the room and scooped the key and the locket from the floor, and she looked up at him in bewilderment as he fastened it around his neck with a satisfied smile. "Sebastian's heart was his weakest point, so prone is he to fall in love, to love so blindly and desperately that the whole world apart from his lover disappears. Of course it would be what the key took from him. He loved you, Minerva, and you killed him. Just like I knew you would."  
  
And he turned on his heel and strode from the room. 


	9. 9 Realisations

9 - Realisations  
  
Tears poured down Minerva's face, she laid with Sebastian's body until it went cold, until she could no longer hold onto the fantasy that it had all been a dream, that she would wake in a few minutes, a few hours, and find him staring down at her with a silly grin on his face, the sun shining in through the window.  
  
She cried until she could cry no more, until her eyes were red and puffy and would take a week to go down, and until she had wretched all the grief inside her into a wet puddle on the pillow and felt like a hollow, empty shell that would never, ever be full again.  
  
"I stayed there for three weeks, very much a prisoner - if not from Jeromie and Sebastian's friends, loyal puppy dogs he had convinced that I had maliciously murdered their friend, then a prisoner of my own mind, or my own tortured grief and guilt, knowing that if I had not been so blind, Sebastian would still be alive. I was hollow, an empty shell, and since in essence I had killed him, I didn't even try to defend myself against the violent outbursts of his friends, their words or their fists, as they kept me locked up in my room and only gave me enough food to keep me alive. It was probably Jeromie who prevented them from handing me into the police. muggle law keepers, because he knew there would be an inquiry into Sebastian's death and it wasn't anything that could be solved with forensic silence. I really don't know how he convinced them, and at the time I was filled with too much apathy to care. As far as I know it, Jeromie is a muggle, but he knew about the keys workings from one of our books that must have been misplaced in one of their bookstores.  
  
"He told me later, with a very satisfied smile on his face, that it had been he who had planted suggestions in the minds of others, that Sebastian and I had been making love, that I was deluded in some way, believing myself in possession of some kind of magical key. I remember the way his eyes roved my body as he told me that he had been watching. that night, and had seen me hand the key to Sebastian and tell him that I trusted him. He read me like a book, he anticipated every move I would make, from my suspicious nature to the fact that I would discard the key when I realised what it was doing to my lover. Lying on the floor like it was, it was anyone's to take. And once he had it on, there was only one way for me to retrieve it. And I would never do that.  
  
"I tried to escape my room one day; used Alohamora on the lock. used a summoning charm on the key. of course it was protected against such things. Jeromie caught me, and that was when he snapped my wand. I felt like a part of me had died.  
  
"I think it was three weeks later, almost a month after that first night together, that I discovered exactly what the extent of our lovemaking had been. It was instinct, I think, realising that something wasn't right, that my body wasn't going through the monthly cycle that it usually went through. I had always been one of those women whose bodies worked like clockwork, the same every month for all the years it had been happening. I don't really know how or why I came out of the depths of despair for long enough to notice that my body wasn't right, but it hit me like a lightening bolt, that I was suddenly living for two. My life had a sense of meaning again; there was something to live for. It was that knowledge that brought me back from the brink, that sense of responsibility. My actions had killed Sebastian, but there was still something of him left inside of me, some part of him that hadn't been destroyed when I had used the key. It became my reason for living - that even though I had failed him, I wasn't going to fail our child. But I was trapped.  
  
"Once I began feeling again, I began to hate. I hated Jeromie for what he had done; I hated my aunt for not telling me that the consequences of using the key would be so horrible, so drastic. She could have told me that the key would destroy whatever it touched. It had destroyed Sebastian; it had destroyed everything that I was. I hated Sybil for not being good enough to be Keeper, that I was cursed with this treacherous little thing because of her failure. The only thing that kept me sane was the knowledge that I had something growing within me - it was like my light in the dark, a flower blooming from ashes. My son, my daughter? Sebastian and I combined into one being.  
  
"Three more months passed in a blur, I don't remember many details from them but the horror of living in fear, of knowing that the days only made Sebastian's friends hate me more - it manifested itself in their fists and their boots. I took blows to the face many, many times, curled in a ball to protect my stomach from their blows. I wouldn't let them kill my child, and I wouldn't let them kill me. I didn't know how I was going to ever get away, but I was determined to make a life for my child, somehow.  
  
"But my duty as a mother was not my only one. My duty as Keeper Of The Key was even more sacred, because a Keeper with no morals had the power to destroy more lives than even he realised. A muggle with a magical artefact, who didn't understand its nature, it was more dangerous than my mind could comprehend. I knew, whatever happened, that I must retrieve the key, and I must escape.  
  
"They say lightening never strikes in the same place twice, but I disagree, for it was like the electrical surge of knowledge that told me I was pregnant, and again when the first threads of an escape plan came to me. I grasped them tight, worked on them, and wove them into a plan that was so ludicrous it was almost possible. 


	10. 10 Escape

10 - Escape  
  
She could not meet Albus's eye, feeling the terrible weight of guilt from the consequences of her actions that so burned her. Her hands shook.  
  
"You must think me." she couldn't find a word to describe what he must think of her - what she thought of herself. Repulsed? Disgraced? They didn't half cover it. She examined her fingers as though they were the most interesting things in the world, not wanting to look up and confront the look that most certainly must be playing in Albus Dumbledore's eyes.  
  
Two gentle fingers slid under her chin, and Albus lifted her face up so that she had no choice but to look at him. Her gaze slid into his, and what she saw there shocked her more than would all the disgust in the world - compassion, and a certain understanding.  
  
Tears stung behind her eyes, and salty droplets blurred her vision before she yielded to them and they tumbled down across her cheeks.  
  
"Minerva," he wiped them away with his fingers, "I don't think any less of you for what happened. You are human, like us all, and everybody makes mistakes. I can't lie to you and say that these last months won't live with you for the rest of your life, but I can say that what you did makes you no less a person."  
  
That did not help the tears, Minerva thought, as a wave of gratitude and warmth washed over her at his words, but her tears kept flowing as though someone had turned on a tap.  
  
"I suppose you want to hear the rest of the story." She said with a small smile, wiping her face with the heel of her hand, as if the pressure would stop the flow of the crystal droplets.  
  
"I would like to, if you are ready to tell me." He slid back into his chair, and held her gaze.  
  
"The key was the most important thing." Minerva said resolutely. "More important than anything. I would do whatever it took to get it back."  
  
As the days passed, Minerva began to act increasingly insane, rocking back and forward on her bed when the others came to feed her, calling out random sentences at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night, whispering and gibbering incoherently whenever there was someone close enough to hear her. Inside her own head, she was as sane and coherent as ever, but outwardly, she was a lunatic, was going crazy.  
  
All part of her plan. Soon enough, she must draw Jeromie to her, for he was the ringleader, and the one who would decide what to do with her. Her grief had driven her mad. She was playing a fickle, high, dangerous card.  
  
Finally, the world yielded. Following a particularly loud gurgling shriek as someone passed, she heard feet and voices stop outside the door.  
  
"I think she's gone, Jeromie, what are we going to do with her?" It was Cynthia's voice.  
  
A grunt of thoughtfulness. "I'll.deal with her." Was his soft reply, something that she barely heard. In the darkness of her room, Minerva smiled.  
  
The door opened, and a shaft of bright light illuminated her bed for a moment, flickered in her eyes as she lifted her head of messy hair to look up at Jeromie, a crooked, insane smile painted on her face. He stepped inside the room, closed the door, and they were enveloped in darkness once again.  
  
"Minerva." He said it softly, but strongly, as though demanding to know whether this was a truth or an act.  
  
"Se..Sebastian?" she asked, trying to make it sound unsure, make her voice lilt, as though she truly thought it was him, thought it could be him. As if she hadn't killed him.  
  
"No, Minerva." He stepped toward her. "It is Jeromie. Sebastian is dead."  
  
She slid to the end of her bed. "Sebastian?" she reached out and took Jeromie's hand. Jeromie looked as though he had been about to correct her again, but at her touch, he stopped.  
  
"Sebastian." She cooed, cradling his hand against her face as if gave her comfort. Inside, her stomach roiled, but an act was an act. She must be prepared to do anything to recover the key.  
  
"Sebastian." Her tone changed, and she smiled up at Jeromie, sliding the hand down over her shoulders and to chest, placing it over one of her breasts. She grabbed his other hand and pulled him toward her, parting her legs so he stood between them. "Take me Sebastian."  
  
She did not flinch as she looked up at him, she was a better actress than even she knew she was. With a smile she watched him, as though encouraging him.  
  
He studied her. "What are you playing at, Minerva?" he asked softly with a small smile.  
  
"Sebastian, I love you."  
  
He ran his fingers through her matted curls, watched her for any reaction that might suggest she was putting it on. "What are you thinking, Minny, what is inside your heart?"  
  
This was what Minerva had been waiting for. What did she have to destroy? She didn't care about anything any more. He fumbled with the Key, although she couldn't see it. Could see and feel nothing until he touched it to her chest.  
  
It was as though someone had punctured the aery layer of her aura, the bubble that enclosed her mind as thought, as her thoughts mingled with his and her emotions and intentioned flowed and ebbed into the pictures in his mind. She felt sucked dry, like a pond that had been drained. Her fingers grasped the key chain, knowing the game was up. Jeromie knew it all - that she was pregnant, that she was in no way insane, that the next thing she would do would be to throw herself from the window and hope for the best. Beyond that, she had no plan, and she was glad of it, because if she had he would have known that too.  
  
This time, as the key turned red hot, Jeromie let go of it, but Minerva held the chain. She wrenched it from him, not caring what happened now. He lunged at her, but her will was stronger than his, as was her knee stronger than his exposed crotch. He doubled up in pain as she struck him at his most vulnerable, ignoring the blinding, burning pain in her chest as she looped the chain around her neck, and racing across the room. She pulled open the shutters, opened the window and threw herself through. It was a twelve foot drop.  
  
Feline feet hit the ground lightly and scampered off into the pouring rain.  
  
Jeromie recovered, slightly, stumbled from the room, yelled at the top of his lungs from the top of the stairs. "Minerva is gone! Somebody chase her!" Then collapsed to nurse his wounded ego once again.  
  
It was when the Key went cold and turned her insides to ice that she was forced back into her human form, that she felt the first cramp in her gut as the mark on her chest turned black. Brought to her knees by the pain and the sickening realisation of what was happening, she curled herself up on the wet ground and let out a low moan, not even the most miniscule expression of her pain.  
  
Almost at the same moment, she heard the dog howl, and realised that she must be pursued. She hauled herself to her feet, knowing what would happen if they caught her, what Jeromie would do to get the Key back, and she ran. Ran into the darkness, into the rain, into the unknown. 


	11. 11 A New Beginning

11 - A New Beginning  
  
"And that's what brought me to you." She said finally. Her fingers fumbled with the laces of her dress, and she undid them, opening the gown far enough so that he could see the black imprint on her chest. "Impaled on my own weapon." This time she did not feel the need to cry, to mourn. Telling the story had felt like exorcising a demon, she had expelled the devil of guilt and shame from inside her, and she felt cleansed of the touch Jeromie had left on her soul. It felt like her life was beginning all over again.  
  
Albus Dumbledore seemed to have come to the same conclusion, blue eyes glittering with silent contemplation. "I believe," he said quietly, "That some souls are meant to know each other. You will meet that child some day, Minerva, a soul you were meant to know."  
  
She was touched by his words, and wondered f it were possible, and if she would know the soul if she ever did meet it. Would she recognise it somewhere in her heart as the soul that had once resided inside her?  
  
He continued as though he had never spoken. "I am Headmaster as Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There is an opening in the staff, for a new Transfiguration teacher." His eyes gazed at her steadily, taking in everything that she was - the woman, the witch. "With proper training, I believe you are the right person for the job."  
  
She couldn't speak. He was offering her the chance of a lifetime, the chance to begin again in a place where nobody but he would know of her past failure, a chance to make something of the life she thought she had destroyed, a chance to enrich children's lives as she had planned to teach her own son or daughter. Tears glittered in her eyes once again. Sometimes, she wondered if the hormones were still somewhere inside her. She was not a woman who usually cried.  
  
She was overcome. She didn't know how to respond, how to encompass how grateful she was. Instead, her reply was probably the most ridiculous thing she could have possibly said, but, at the time, the words were the first to land on her tongue. "But I have no wand." She whispered.  
  
Albus smiled. "Wands can be replaced."  
  
She smiled herself, unable to resist. What a stupid thing to say. "Albus, I don't know what to say."  
  
"Say yes." He prompted.  
  
He was not telling her, he was asking her, offering it to her.  
  
"Yes." She smiled. And at that moment a light seemed to dawn on her, as if the sun was shining through a hole in the clouds directly into her soul. Where, just a few nights ago, her future had seemed bleak and hopeless, everything important in her life torn away from her by cruel twists of fate, now she saw a long, vast road stretching out before her, a sea of endless possibilities.  
  
Her eyes met Albus Dumbledore's, stared right at him, into him, their eyes locked for a but a moment that seemed an eternity. He saw the hope in her eyes, and she saw fulfilment that he had been able to create that hope, a great happiness that he gained only from the witnessing of happiness in others. At that moment, she realised she loved him - loved him more than she would possibly ever love anybody else for ever more. It was not the passionate, physical love that she felt for Sebastian, who would have a place in her heart forever, but a deep kindred love, as though he were the brother or the father that she had never known. It filled her up inside and made her feel complete again.  
  
"Thankyou, Albus."  
  
****  
  
Weeks later, she stood in front of the mirror surveying herself. She wore robes of rich red and green tartan, belled around the wrists and hovering voluminously about her ankles. She wore smart, high heeled boots and there was a wand protruding from her pocket. She felt more like a witch than she had felt in years. She felt natural, like this is how things should be. She looked at herself in the mirror. It was wonderful, but she still didn't look right. There was something wrong, the face looking back at her, or more the whole image, didn't seem to fit the new identity she was trying to create for herself. There was a trace of the child there, of the child she no longer wanted to be. With a wry smile, she realised what it was.  
  
She picked up a hairbrush from the dresser, raked it through her thick curls. They were Minerva, the unsure child burdened under the weight of a key that really had no weight at all, they were Minny, the girl that had suffered, the girl that had felt that guilt and hatred would consume her. With a nod to herself, She raked them back across her head, and with several sturdy pins, she pinned them back into a tight bun behind her head. She looked like a woman now. This was who she wanted to be. She looked like Professor McGonagall. 


End file.
